The Wrath of God

by Jim Balzotti

  Matt walked for a while before he stopped to admire the early morning sun breaking out over the horizon and gleaming off the lake. He thought of his dad. His father always told him that there were so many precious moments given to us by God that we just walked by, in too much of a hurry to see the beauty that unfurled before us. It started to rain again, just a few drops, but enough to wet their faces and chill their bodies. The treetops were now beginning to appear in the mist rolling off the mountain.

  Matt picked up a movement to his left, coming from a blown-down alder. A large buck, seemingly still unaware of the presence of the man and the boy, moved effortlessly through the native brush and branches with a fluid, soundless motion. Matt waited for the buck to drop his head to browse, and when he did, Matt raised his gun and fired the killing shot. He stopped and paused for a moment before he walked over to the deer, now lying motionless on the ground. Father O’Mallory walked up beside him. There were no high-fives or back slapping, celebrating the kill. Instead, the Father put his hand on Matt’s shoulder and said, “We must give thanks.” Matt went to his knees, and both bowed their heads.

  “Heavenly Father, we give thanks for giving us life and for the countless blessings You have bestowed upon us. Thank You for this gift of meat to sustain us, for the water that slakes our thirst, and for Your love that surrounds us. Amen.”

  “Amen,” Matt replied. He pulled at Father O’Mallory’s coat sleeve and motioned with his head across the lake toward Mt. Katahdin. The cirrus clouds that had previously covered the mountains in a white shroud parted, just for a moment, revealing the beauty of the peak towering majestically into the sky. Looking at the vista, the Father and Matt felt the humility God teaches us through His grand design in nature, with its intricate patterns and peaceful orderliness.

  Matt pulled out his hunting knife and went to work cleaning his deer. He carefully removed the inside organs, placing the heart and liver in separate plastic bags. The hide, tawny brown, thick and luxurious, would be salted and stretched on the side of the barn. It would fetch a handsome price from the tannery for people in the city wanting deerskin gloves. Everything that could be used would be used. Nothing would go to waste. The Father watched Matt work, impressed by the young man’s skill and reverence. When he was finished cleaning the buck, he attached a thick white nylon rope around its horns to pull it back to camp. Father O’Mallory wanted to help, but it was mostly downhill, and Matt wanted to do it by himself. The Father relieved him of his rifle and backpack, and the pair, one man and one boy, slowly walked back down the ravine. The rain changed into a driving sleet, then snow, which began to accumulate rapidly. By the time they reached the car, a blanket of pure white covered the silent forest floor.

  That day forged a close relationship. Father O’Mallory became a father figure and surrogate for Matt. They hunted and fished together often, and the Father tutored Matt in Bible studies. Matt was so interested that one day he told Father O’Mallory he was going to join the priesthood.

  Matt snapped out of his daydreaming when the movement of a coyote caught his eye crossing the trail in front of him, unhurried and unmolested.

  The sun had just begun to dip below the mountain and cast a long, wide shadow across the lake. Matt felt a shudder and pulled his sweater tightly around him. He had better be getting back to camp.

  How did we get to this point? How could this have happened to America? He became overwhelmed and felt very, very old. He knew the rest of his family—at least that’s what they called themselves—depended on him to lead. He delegated as much as possible, but they looked to him for answers that he did not have, or for comfort he could not give. He watched a leaf fall down in the stream, tossed helplessly about with the current. He could readily identify with it.

  He pulled himself up, dusting the dirt off his faded and torn jeans, carrying his lone fish, and headed back to camp. The younger members had been pushing for violent action against the Chinese, still itching to avenge the killing at the church. Matt promised to address them tonight over dinner.

  Winter 2028

  White House

  At midday, Xi Chang looked out onto the expansive rolling lawn of the White House. It was covered with a thin, translucent blanket of snow and frosted with tiny icicles that sparkled like scattered diamonds. He stood on the second-story balcony and ran his hands along the pitted white granite railing, and thought of how many American presidents had done the same before him. Behind him was the Executive Office Building, or more commonly known to the public as the West Wing. This was Xi’s command center. It was from here that he launched his worldwide military strategic plan. He smiled. The first cornerstone of the White House was laid by the famous American general and first president of the United States, George Washington. The White House and its occupants had represented the epicenter of American imperialism, greed, arrogance, corruption, and world power for more than two hundred years. That period of glory was all over now. America was crushed, and the Chinese red flag of five stars replaced the Stars and Stripes.

  Xi reflected pensively upon the United States’ unconditional surrender to his regime. Following the surrender, he summarily ordered the destruction of all monuments and symbols of American power. He was not going to give any false hope to the Americans, or let them think they could create a separate sovereign nation as they had foolishly allowed the Native Americans to do.

  First he bulldozed the dome-shaped rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial, leaving the rubble heaped in a pile for all to see. Next he destroyed the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, and the Iwo Jima Memorial, which represented American military prowess and imperialism. At the Arlington National Cemetery, the bulldozers swept away the gravestones of John F. Kennedy and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier alike, leaving just a barren, scarred field in their place. He took down the American flag that flew over the White House and threw it on top of the burning pile of their priceless historical documents and memorabilia that had previously adorned the walls of the Capitol. As a final gesture, although he did appreciate their beauty, he cut down the 3,750 Yoshino cherry blossom trees that the Japanese sent to America in 1912 as a token of their friendship. It was not lost on Xi that these “friends” then launched the infamous sneak attack on Pearl Harbor that catapulted the United States into the war. Friends, thought Xi, were a luxury he did not seek or require.

  Xi’s native tongue was Mandarin, but he also spoke fluent English and Spanish. He excelled as a student of history and knew that the best way to control a conquered people was to harshly abolish any ray of hope they might possess. Hope nurtured rebellion.

  As the sun’s rays glistened through the ice that formed on the upper branches of the pine trees, he mused on how far he had come and what a different world he now lived in. He lifted his face to the sky and let the sun shine on him. The warmth filled him with a deep satisfaction. Below, there were sounds of a flurry of activity. He could smell the pungent odor of diesel fuel from the convoy of military jeeps and troop transport trucks, with their red star displayed on their doors, surrounding the White House, turning the previously manicured lawns into wide strips of muddy dirt. He could hear the bark of his military commanders issuing orders to their troops. The commands were punctuated by the shrill screams of the captured Americans. The prisoners were restrained by heavy, rough iron shackles that bit cruelly into their naked arms and legs, as they awaited execution. Public executions sowed fear into onlookers, and demonstrated that even minimal dissension would not be tolerated. The punishment for all infractions was the same: death by firing squad.

  The more vocal rebels were crucified. Although crucifying prisoners was time consuming and not very practical to do on a large scale, he knew it had a devastating effect on the crowds who were forced to watch. When they were dragged to the large wooden crosses, some called out for Jesus, but most just cried and pleaded for the pain to stop. Low-pitched sobbing emanated from the gallery of onlookers as his men drove large sharpened iron spik
es into the hands and feet of the prisoners. The guards were men specially chosen for their penchant for cruelty.

  They would taunt the Americans by asking them why their God didn’t save them, and saying that they should be happy they were being crucified as their savior Jesus had been.

  At age sixty-eight, Xi was the Paramount Leader of China, which was to say he was the supreme and sole political authority in charge of the three biggest government sectors China had: the State, the Media, and the Military. His other official titles were General Secretary of the Communist Party, Chairman of the Central Committee, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission. China’s official name was the People’s Republic of China, but it was never confused with being a government of the people. Xi Chang solely ruled with a draconian hand and tolerated no dissent. Dissidents either ended up in Siberia and were worked to death, or were simply summarily brought into a courtyard and shot. He took no counsel other than his own.

  In 1960, Xi was born into a poor rural farming family, scratching out a hardscrabble existence on a small plot of rocky soil they leased in the rice terraced mountains of Yunnan. At that time, farmers were not allowed to own land but instead were part of the People’s Commune System. Each farmer would have about a half-acre plot of land in which to grow their crops. The lucky ones might have a pig or a chicken or two, but most were able to grow only enough to feed their families, with little left over to sell at market. Others, not as fortunate, starved.

  Xi’s family lived in a small one-room hut his father had built using scraps of wood he salvaged in the countryside. There was a small outhouse behind, and his mother cooked their simple meals of rice and slivers of fish, when they could trade for it, over an open hearth with charcoal. The family wore simple cotton pants and shirts they would wash in the nearby stream, with thin leather sandals for their feet. Xi’s father and mother worked in the fields all day, planting by hand the green shoots of rice, sometimes not even returning to their home until nightfall. Farming was incessant, backbreaking work and complicated by the severe shortage of arable land. The difference between having a successful crop or not could be life itself.

  When Xi was barely a toddler, the family crops were destroyed by locusts. A full season of hard work was gone in one frenzied feeding flash. Growing barely enough potatoes and rice to survive, and not being able to afford feeding another hungry mouth, his father went to the local village head for help. Xi’s father was told of a man in the military who was looking to adopt a son, as his wife could not bear children. He would pay good money for a healthy boy. Xi’s mother cried and pleaded with her husband not to sell their only child, but her pleas fell on deaf ears. Later that week, he took Xi to the village. The soldier, who was actually a captain in the Chinese army, picked up and inspected the baby. Satisfied it was healthy, he offered Xi’s father a year’s wages, which amounted to one hundred and twenty US dollars, and a water buffalo, which would help him in the fields. Xi’s father accepted the offer and handed his son over to the captain, sadly knowing he would never see him again. He did not.

  Xi never knew his parents or whether or not he had any siblings. He tried to remember them, but the memories had faded. Sometimes a random image would just pop into his head, but he didn’t know if it was real or just a fabrication of his young mind yearning to recall. When he was nine years old, his adoptive father told him without emotion that his parents had drowned in a flash flood. With this information, Xi shut the door on his past. His adoptive mother became ill and died shortly after his tenth birthday. The loss of the only mother he had known left him bereft. He often cried himself to sleep, careful not to let his father hear his quiet sobs. While his father provided his basic needs, he was far from nurturing, and would view Xi’s tears as a sign of weakness.

  Oftentimes, Xi’s father would leave on covert military missions that were neither discussed nor explained to the small boy. Xi was left in the hands of the housekeeper and her husband, who did the cooking and cleaning for the family. They had no children of their own and relished spending time alone with him. The husband would eke out time from his duties to play with the young boy, and his wife would make special sesame rice balls that he loved. Since Xi’s father had forbidden the housekeepers from spoiling the child, they were careful to keep their affections clandestine.

  Xi had very little social interaction with other children and thus became a loner who buried himself in the many history and military books that his father had collected. He especially liked the teaching of the famous Chinese General Sun Tzu, who wrote the extremely influential book on military strategy The Art of War. He also favored the historical accounts of the Mongolian warlord Genghis Khan. Those early readings would help shape the man he would become.

  When Xi turned eleven, he attended the Central Party School, which was the ideological heart of the Communist Party. He excelled in mathematics and science, and studied Uechi-ryu, an ancient Okinawan form of self-defense. His exemplary academic performance caught the attention of the military leaders who ran the school. Much to his delight, Xi was selected for further advancement. During this time a singular event occurred that would shape his life forever.

  As a Chinese citizen, Xi was aware of the long historical pattern of mutual suspicion and hostility between China and Russia. It was similar to the manner in which American children knew about the conflict between their fledgling country and England’s domination that led to the Revolutionary War. Chinese students were taught that from 1949 to 1958, Russia made military incursions in the area of Northwest Xinjiang, seizing by force almost three million square kilometers of Chinese land. This conquest was used to teach the young students to always regard the Russians with suspicion and mistrust.

  In 1968, Russia invaded Czechoslovakia in order to seize more land. While the USSR never admitted that acquisition of more territory was its goal, that action gave rise to suspicions by the Chinese about Russia’s intentions toward them. Sharp border clashes began to occur along the Ussuri River, and tension heightened between the two powerful nations.

  In 1971, when Xi was eleven, the Chinese, fearing a Soviet strike into China on their nuclear testing facilities in Xinjiang, sent his father on a secret mission into Russia with a handful of trained operatives to assess the Russian military strength in the area. It was a highly classified operation and only involved Xi’s father and three other trained military commandos. Unbeknownst to the group, one of the men was an agent working for the Russians. The men were captured, given a mock trial, and executed. Their bodies were never recovered. What was particularly painful for Xi was that the man who betrayed the group was his father’s best friend, and was like an uncle to Xi. A man who had shared many meals at his home and had bounced Xi on his knee when he was a young child. His hatred for the Russians and his fealty to China cemented. He also learned to trust no one but himself, a lesson he would carry with him into his adult life.

  Upon graduating the Central Party School, he joined the People’s Liberation Army, or PLA. After two years of training, he quickly advanced to the rank of sergeant. He was stationed at a remote outpost near Lake Balkhash on the border between Russia and China, a site of past conflicts. One dark, moonless night, while on patrol he spied a column of camouflaged Russian soldiers silently crossing into Chinese territory. A firefight ensued, but his squad was overrun and half of his men were killed, including his company commander. He rallied the remaining troops and counter attacked. Against the standing orders at that time, Xi pursued them back into Russian territory and captured them. With his squad leader dead, Xi assumed command. He refused to take any captives. The thought of his father being betrayed and then executed had forever hardened his heart. He walked up to each Russian, now bound and kneeling, coldly pointed his pistol, and fired a bullet one by one into their heads, letting them fall lifelessly onto the blood-soaked ground. His fellow soldiers would whisper how he insisted on personally executing the Russians, no matter how much the captives cried or begged for
their lives. When Chinese troops arrived to relieve them, Xi was sent to Zhongnanhai, the massive government building in the capital of Beijing, to give a full account of his actions. He fully expected to be severely disciplined, if not executed himself. The Chinese did not favor individual thoughts or actions, and he had disobeyed a direct standing order not to enter Russian territory, let alone taking it upon himself to execute prisoners who had surrendered, offering no further threat.

  Xi reported for his disciplinary hearing dressed in his khaki green military uniform, freshly starched and pressed. He stood at attention and reported to the tribunal the facts of the skirmish as they occurred. The captured Russians had violated Chinese territory, as they had many times, and the ensuing firefight resulted in the death of his commanding officer and half the men of his squad. He believed the Chinese military should not tolerate that kind of aggression. The policy was to deal with such attacks severely in order to send an emphatic message that China would not tolerate outside interference in its affairs. Xi explained that he executed the Russian captives because they were enemies of the State. He testified to the committee that he alone fired on the Russians, and the responsibility for their deaths rested solely on his shoulders. His fellow comrades should not be punished for his actions.

  The committee listened dispassionately to Xi’s account. At the conclusion of his testimony, they took a brief recess to discuss the matters in chambers. Xi stood motionless awaiting his fate. The committee returned to the hearing room and advised him that they needed additional time to make a decision since the ruling had not been unanimous. He was dismissed and told he would be notified of their decision. For an agonizing long time Xi wondered if he would suffer the same fate as his father, only this time at the hands of his own country, for his disobedience. Three days later he was summoned to meet with the committee and told he was being promoted to the rank of captain and appointed to the Central Military Commission as part of a special new division, the Black Tigers, or黑老虎, dealing in covert operations. He would answer only to them. Until now Xi had been expecting the worst, so he received the promotion in stunned silence, thanked the committee, and left to assume his new duties.